


Home Is a Fire

by Erradianwhocantread



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Beating, Child Abuse, FeanorianWeek, Gen, Hostage Situations, Past Abuse, Rule 63, alcoholic parent, atonement vs wallowing, group therapy on the beach, political coup or sibling bullshit?, reconnecting with parent after abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-05 00:05:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14031813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erradianwhocantread/pseuds/Erradianwhocantread
Summary: My contributions for Feanorian Week 2018





	1. So Comes Snow After Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maedhros tells Elros what he wishes he could tell himself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJOR CW FOR CHILD ABUSE

Water had not been cooperative since Alqualonde, and since Sirion it was impossible to heat it with the spirit, and so Maedhros waited impatiently for the coals in the brazier set in the floor to set steam rising from the bath. Everything was far too loud: the hiss and smoulder of the charred and glowing wood, the clumsy tearing of the herbs in his lap, the soft taps their leaves made when they hit the water. Elros’s breathing, punctuated by occasional snivels and sobs. He should have left this part to the other twin and finished seeing to his own brother. This should not be his part. But the violence of it all had been too much for both the little ones, and if Maedhros had pursued his brother, he could not have vouched for the outcome. He pressed the bundle of lavender down against his leg with his stump and tore more leaves from the stalk. The stone walls of the keep, the heat and flickering light from the fire, the smell of sweet herbs, the involuntary weeping of a battered captive, it was all nauseously familiar. Only he was on the wrong side of it. The comfort should have been left to Elrond, or to no one. 

Steam was rising from the water now. Maedhros threw a final fistful of lavender into the bath and rose to bank the coals in the brazier. “The water’s ready.” He heard no response from the pile of blankets he’d drawn over the little elfling once he’d satisfied himself nothing was broken. “Can you get the rest of your clothes off yourself, or do you need help?” Behind him, the blankets rustled in defiance. He knew how dear-bought it was. He knew the burning shame that rolled out, like ripples in a pool, from each yelp and whimper that slipped through. The least he could do was pretend not to hear. He pretended not to notice that it should have taken half that time to rise from a bed and remove trousers and smallclothes. He pretended not to hear the way the child limped. He could return at least that much dignity.

Elros needed help getting into the bath, either from his injuries, the aftershocks of fear that left the body trembling and useless as a mass of frog’s eggs, or the draining effects this must have had on his spirit, Maedhros couldn’t say. The outline of a boot was starting to show on the child’s side. There were similar prints on his stomach and back, and his face was swelling and splotched, and not from weeping. Maedhros let the image sink into him like broken ships into the sea. He hadn’t looked to see how his brother had landed after he’d flung him off of Elros. He’d been dimly aware that Maglor had fallen down the steps. Hopefully, he wasn’t dead. That would be far too merciful. He shook all thought of his brother out with the cloth he fetched. He’d seen the look on Elrond’s face when he’d leaped on Maglor, a moment glazed in shellac before he’d turned to scoop the lumpen bundle Elros had been reduced to from the corner. He’d cut his knee on a shard of broken plate when he’d done that, he realized. He shook that from his mind as well.

The cork on the comfrey bottle yielded grudgingly to his teeth. Maedhros doused the cloth with it and crouched beside edge of the bath. He rubbed it gently over the places that were starting to color or swell, shoulders, arms, back, face. Elros flinched at every touch, but he was silent. Draping the cloth on the edge of the tub, Maedhros gathered the child’s hair and moved it over a now-mottled shoulder. Maglor must have landed a particularly vicious blow there, because that pulled a choked yelp from Elros. And then, soft and broken and with awful conviction: “I shouldn’t have thrown the plate at him.”

Maedhros recoiled. The fury he had pushed aside boiled up, flooding his vision til he was not sure who it was for, Maglor, himself, that creature, or the One that had made three such monsters. He swallowed it. These children had tasted too much of rage already. He shifted around the tub until he was face to face with Elros, the lurid colors staining his baby-round face an adamant condemnation. “Look at me,” he said, compassion and rage strangling each other in his throat. And then, louder, rougher, when Elros’s eyes didn’t move from the water, “Look at me.” His eyes were wet with despair and that cruel disbelief when they met Maedhros’s. “None of this is your fault.” The boy’s face before him changed, and though it was still Elros before him, Maedhros felt as though he was looking through time’s mirror, to his own face, battered and tearstained. “There is nothing you could have done or said that would make you deserve what was done to you.” He was speaking far more loudly than he had intended. Elros looked at him but kept his silence. “Nothing. Do you understand me?”

Elros nodded and he let his head fall to rest on his bony child’s knees sticking out of the steaming water. The strangeness dissolved and Maedhros found himself once again on the wrong side of memory. His eyes fell on Elros’s shaking back as he retreated from the tub to warm towels and ready poltices in preparation of the water cooling, and let the fury rise to burn his tears before they fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comfrey and Lavender help reduce swelling and inflamation and heal bruises.
> 
> The idea came actually from a Maglor hc that fidelishaereticus and I have, that Maglor has basically a berserker switch, and once it's flipped, it's almost impossible to get him to come down from it. Because I grew up around people with severe PTSD, I started thinking about how that would work with small (traumatized and defiant) children around. Fid and I also have an hc about a lot of the torment that Sauron inflicted was in being kind and caring after letting Mae be tortured, or torturing Mae personally, and I also wanted to explore how that specific trauma would mix with being a caretaker of small children who were also captives.


	2. With Ash in Your Mouth (You Ask It to Burn Again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elrond and Maglor discuss the nature of penance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty tame, but there's some oblique reference to past abuse

**** The ship had sailed on the tide, retreating with the sea and the sun into the West, never to return. A wet grey plain shimmered in the fading sunlight where the waves had rolled earlier. Elrond would not say a waste, for it was spangled with ribbons of kelp, on every inch of sand scuttled crabs, some little bigger than the grains of sand themselves, others larger than his hand, and the pools that spotted the bar held small cities of urchins and sea-stars. The havens were now many miles up the beach, as were his shoes. The air reeked of salt and the slow transformation of the bodies of sea-things into black sand and partings. Seagulls wheeled and cried overhead, squabbling over crabs and clams and stones to drop them on. Elrond let his eyes slide shut, let the sounds of the gulls and the cracking shells, the smell and feel of the wet sand between his toes, and the strange fetid ocean-scents of the wind roll him back, back to the little beach amongst the reeds where he and his brother had played. They would scatter the gulls, dig the clams out with their bare hands, fall in the muck laughing when one sprayed them…

The memory was sweet, but it passed, as all things must. Elrond walked on. Tangled amongst the seaweed, here and there, were bits of glass worn smooth and luminous, whether from some downed ship of the Men who lived along the coast, or from lost Numenor or drowned Beleriand, he could not say. Ahead, the crumbled and jagged remains of a sea-wall jutted up out of the flat grey sand. Tall they stood above the plain of the seabed, but the dark stains near their peaks betrayed how little safety they would offer against the incoming tide. There had been no rocks for them to climb as children. He had climbed sea-rocks and mountain-sides since, but those he would not think on now. Some memories must ripen in absence before they could be enjoyed. As he drew nearer the rocks, he realized that the strand was not so desolate as he had thought. 

The voice that drifted to Elrond on the wind stopped him in his tracks. The sand softened about his feet and dark cloudy water licked at the tops of his toes. It was a harsh, bitter, unlovely song, closer to the cry of a gull than the singing of an Elf. The sun rested itself upon the curve of the world and gilded the seabed with violent gold as he stood, transfixed, and sunk heavily into the dancing waves. He laughed. Of course. That was the way of the sea, to take, to alter, and to return. They symmetry of it was just its sort of trick.

The sun had disappeared by the time Elrond found the source of the voice, curled in a hollow on the far side of the rocks that was untouched by algae and barnacles. The tide was coming back, but they had several hours before it would hem them in. It was not the first time since the end of the War of Wrath that Elrond had crossed paths with his erstwhile foster-father. He had sought him out from time to time; they would pass a night together, talking, singing, sometimes reaching each other, sometimes not; and in the morning Maglor would have vanished. He accepted none of Elrond’s offers to travel inland. This time seemed it would be the same. Maglor almost reached out, almost let himself resume the role he had given himself and played so poorly, of sympathetic and comforting parent, when Elrond told him of Celebrian’s abduction and of her decision to go West afterwards. But he stopped himself, looked away, and muttered a curt “I am sorry it proved beyond your art.”

Elros would have erupted, all clear sight and clear ideas of justice, railed at him about how selfish, how indulgent, how unfair it was, after the amount of suffering he’d laid upon them, to sit there and withhold the simplest, easiest comfort for one he’d claimed to care for, made himself responsible for, because now he’d decided he didn’t deserve the role of parent. Elrond had never been able to see so clearly, or at least had never been able to concede so much to the concept of justice. And so he let the pang of disappointment well up and fill him like the tide, and the reality behind it wash him clean of questions, of anger, of hope. No one could be anything other than what they could be, and to expect it, or demand it, was folly. 

He noticed that Maglor’s right hand was bare of the wrappings that had covered it since he’d taken to this wandering life. Elrond did not gasp, did not recoil. It was not the first, or the most shockingly unnatural wound, he’d ever seen. Studying it on the level of sight and of Sight, he realized something strange about it. Everyone had always thought the burn of the Blessing irreversible, and perhaps that was so in the strictest sense that a mark formed by and on the spirit could not be removed. But as a spirit could change, so could the mark. “This, I think, is not beyond my art,” he said. “I could at least ease your suffering, if you would allow it.”

Maglor noticed, as if for the first time, that his hand was bare, and hastily covered it in the tatters of his cloak. “My suffering is a small thing, in comparison to what I deserve.”

Elrond sighed. It was, he supposed, progress. He should be patient, should understand that it was well that at least now Maglor could acknowledge his own part in the horrors of the First Age. It was worlds away from the pretense of innocence, and the staunch campaign to prop that up, fought with lies, threats, and an ocean of wine, that had characterized Maglor as Elrond first knew him. It was best to let him come to these things in his own time, at his own will, not to rip the veil away and let light, so harsh after so much time spent in darkness, glare into him. Elros had never understood that. But perhaps Elrond had understood it too well. Perhaps an age and more was enough time to spend so senselessly.

“It is,” agreed Elrond. “But this pain produces nothing but more suffering. And pain cannot be cured with pain. Grant that you deserve torment, when you so tormented others. Grant that you deserve not the companionship of your own kind, when you destroyed the lives of so many. Grant, even, that you do not deserve kindness or mercy, when you had so little to spare for others.” It was hideous how much more visibly comfortable Maglor was with this high-handed sentencing than he had been at the prospect of giving kindness to his so-called son. “But grant, also, that I have not deserved to have my family taken from me. And grant that it is within your power to alleviate that loss, to reverse it, even, should you choose.” He rose and looked at the shallow foamy waves burbling at the feet of the rocks. “Your wound is not beyond my art. Should you grow weary of the darkness, you know where I may be found.” Elrond hopped lightly into the moon-silver surf and began the trek back to the havens, the dark water cold on his ankles. Maglor would follow, someday, or he would become a bitter voice on the wind. But he could only be what he chose to be, and to demand otherwise would be folly. 


	3. We Should All Burn Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celegorm reacts to Morgoth's offer to ransom Maedhros

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Using Quenya names because of when this takes place (right after Maedhros is captured)  
> 2) I have rule 63'd Maglor, Caranthir, Curufin, and Maedhros, because I can.

Telling time in the unending darkness with which the Moringotto had besmirched the earth was nearly impossible. Curvo claimed it had been four of what would have been days, if days still existed, since the ambush that the offer arrived by the movements of the stars. To Tyelkormo it felt like the timeless eternity of a dream. But dreams he could wake from. Not so this. 

It was written in their father’s letters. It was possible that it was just for their own benefit that their Enemy had chosen such a method, but it felt like insult, like one more thing he would take from their family: their grandfather, the Silmarils, the light, their father, their sister, and now their language. Was there anything he couldn’t take from them if he chose to extend his arm to do so? 

The red flames in the crude room in the hastily thrown-up wooden building that served as council chamber cast lurid dancing lights across the faces of Tyelkormo’s siblings as they sat in silence, considering the offer of ransom, Ambarussa as far from the rest of them as he could get, Carnistir pacing furiously, her shadow cutting through the firelight uncomfortably like the Shadow that had fallen over them at Formenos, Makalaure and Curvo sitting like their mother’s statues, staring into the flames. Tyelkormo watched them, his ears pricking at ever snap of a burning twig, every stomp and whinny of a horse outside. He had not been at ease since they’d been ambushed.

Ambushed.

Lured into a trap in the dark (endless, deeper than the seas), scattered and overwhelmed, and one of them picked off in the chaos. Safety in numbers was merely safety  _ for _ numbers, Tyelkormo knew that. He knew better than all save one the dance of the hunt. 

But in that dance it was always the weak, the very old or very young, the injured or the sick, who were caught, and the herd was always the stronger for it. Not so this time. 

He knew well the dance of the hunt, but never before had he been the hunted. This was abomination, a blasphemous twisting of the natural order, for this power hunted not to feed itself nor to strengthen the ecosystem by pruning its weaknesses, but to destroy.

After what felt like hours but may have been minutes or days for all Tyelkormo could tell, Makalaure spoke, the notes of authority stilted and sour on her silver tongue. “The price he asks for our sister is high, yet I think that it is not too high. He says we must forsake our war and remove from Beleriand to secure her freedom. We will do so. And once we have her safe returned, with all that she has learned of his fortress, we shall gather allies from the south or the east, and take the time to strengthen ourselves, and so come upon him in secret with full force of arms, at some time as seems fit to us.” She turned to gather paper and ink from where they sat on a rude shelf. “I will pen the response. Carnistir and Amras, ready our people to break camp. Tyelkormo and Curufinwe, you will accompany me to deliver our response.”

The terror that had flared in Tyelkormo when the Darkness first fell on them, that had propelled him at the docks and in the first assault against the Moringotto, seethed. What did she want from him? That he should go back, back towards  _ that _ ? So that he must see  _ more  _ of his family destroyed this way? The writhing snakes of fear transformed themselves into fuel within him. The spark took. Tyelkormo straightened his back and strode to the desk where Makalaure was laying the paper. He clamped his hand over it, the sound startling all four of his remaining sibling. “Stop this madness!” he cried, his voice like a ringing trumpet, like their father’s. “Are you so witless as to be fooled again by his offer to parlay? And have you forgotten already,  _ Kanafinwe _ , the solemn Oath we swore, first in Aman and again over the ashes of our father? Are you so craven and so weak-willed that you will forswear yourself so soon?”

The fire flickered in Makalaure’s dark eyes as she gazed steadily into his sneering, livid face. Any of their followers would have believed she was not shaken, but Tyelkormo knew better. “If you had listened, Tyelkormo, to what I said, and not jumped to erroneous conclusions based on only the first sentence, you would understand that I do not intend to forswear our Oath, but neither do I intend to forsake our sister--”

“We don’t even know that Maitimo is alive!” he shouted, more to his other siblings than to her. It wasn’t true. They could all feel her life, faint but insistent, in the web of their family, as they could feel their mother’s, as they could no longer feel their father’s or the other Ambarussa’s. “We don’t know that she is still herself! Have you forgotten also our Grandfather’s stories of what happened to those the Moringotto took, what he did to them?”

“All the more reason for us to waste no time in ransoming her!” Makalaure cut in, her voice now shrill, desperation showing at the seams.

“You would call the Darkness Everlasting upon us for a corpse! For a  _ Yrch _ ! For the chance to be made fool of again and be caught in another trap! He shall not release her, anymore than he released a Silmaril when she went to barter for it! He shall keep her and torment or kill or transform her for his own purposes, and take the rest of us and let the Darkness take those who escape. Our war is for the Silmarils, not for Maitimo. She is lost. The rest of us need not be.”

“Your concerns are noted, but this is not your decision to make,” said Makalaure, louder and with less conviction than she had meant. She sounded like his sister, trying to argue her way out of trouble with their parents, right before she would start to weep for their benefit, not like a king at all.

“No, of course, it is  _ our _ decision,” said Tyelkormo, gesturing to the rest of his siblings. “No one put you in charge.” She tried to interject something about being the next-eldest, about authority therefore passing to her, but he rode on over her weak words. “What say you, Carnistir? What say you, Curvo? What say you, Abarussa? Do you wish to trust to the goodwill of the the lord of lies, who murdered our grandfather, who stole our birthright, who killed our father, and who tricked us and took our sister? Do you wish to risk the Void based on his word? Or do you wish to  give this trash,” he picked up the ransom offer and held it aloft, “the respect it deserves, to take courage and tell this fiend that the children of Feanaro will never speak slithering terms with him, but will beat down his black walls, break open his vile pits, and crush him beneath our feet? What say you?”

Curvo was the first to step to his side. “I say we do our father no dishonor by caving to this creature’s demands and slinking away from the fight. Really, Makalaure, the Teleri at the docks had more courage,” she said, her tone even and cutting as a diamond-bit.

“Maitimo wouldn’t have wished it,” said Carnistir. “She would not have wanted us to be used as bait to hook us with. She never once cried out for help.” It was true. Maitimo had called to them to retreat, to fly. The words had been those of a king looking first and always to the interests and wellbeing of her people, but the underlying tone Tyelkormo had heard many a time. A wolf caught at bay would cry out to its packmates for help, but when the deer screamed, it was to warn its herd to save itself. Carnistir gave a sigh heavy with grief and rage. “I say we make no deals with the Enemy.”

Everyone turned to Ambarussa, not that his voice could now make much difference, yay or nay. “Pitya forswore himself,” he said, refusing still to look at those who had set the torches. “I would not share his fate, and I would not share Maitimo’s. But I would see them avenged.”

Tyelkormo turned back to Makalaure, who had slumped in defeat. “Write  _ our  _ response, sister, that we will pursue with hatred any creature, be he Vala or Maia, Eldar or Aftercomer, friend or foe or kin, who will take and keep from any child of Feanor a Silmaril. Understood?” It wasn’t a question, and Makalaure didn’t treat it as such. Tyelkormo stalked out of the wooden building, grabbing his spear as he went. He would remind himself and the world that Tyelkormo Turkafinwe, third child of Feanaro, was no creature’s prey. 


End file.
